A little over a week ago we received an email from someone claiming to have a GeForce 7800GS. After checking out the card and the emails from NVIDIA confirming that this was in fact a GeForce 7800GS, we knew we had something special on our hands. Today we bring you an engineering prototype that only exists inside NVIDIA, but roadmaps and driver sets indicate this card is the eventual GeForce 6800GT replacement.

We have heard that this part was in the works over at NVIDIA, but we haven't yet heard when this product will be making its way out into the world. Apparently there are board floating around, and since we were lucky enough to get our hands on one we decided to put it through some performance tests and see what it could do. From what we have seen on roadmaps, the performance of the 7800 GS should fall between that of the 6800 GS and the 7800 GT.

Not knowing when this part will actually arrive, or how close to final this part is, means that we could see some small revisions in the card between now and release. Clock speed could change a little bit, but we don't see pipeline configuration changing. If total performance is anything like this in the retail product, we will be quite interested in this part when it is released to the public.

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Despite what you might think, I can guarantee that this article is not at all sanctioned by NVIDIA. (I'd go so far as to say they're probably really unhappy that the info got leaked to us.) I wouldn't say the same for whoever provided the card, though - some company like ASUS, Leadtek, etc. (no, I don't know where it came from) might have slipped us the card to see the reaction. Very little information comes directly from NVIDIA, ATI, etc. without an NDA. We get most of the "secret" stuff through numerous other channels.

We're hardware enthusiasts, and many people have been wondering about lower priced G70 parts. Whether or not this card actually sees the light of day soon (if at all) is most likely going to depend on chip yields for the G70. If a decent number of cores are failing tests on two quads, it makes more sense.

The 7200 and 7600 (or whatever they end up being named) are due out in the next few months. Depending on price/performance, there may or may not be a niche for this product. If it's too fast for the price, it would hurt sales of 7600. We'll see what happens. Reply

product line's getting even more cluttered, but good info nonetheless. surprised AT would be able to post this info without running into legal difficulties, even if a NDA wasn't actually signed...since the card is now 'hot property', I'd be happy to take it off your hands ;) Reply